Guglielmo Righini

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Guglielmo Righini (born February 16, 1908 in Castelfranco Veneto , † May 30, 1978 in Florence ) was an Italian astronomer .

Life

Guglielmo Righini was born in Castelfranco Veneto in Veneto , the son of the station director Francesco Righini and the teacher Margherita Simomi . Due to his father's transfers, he grew up in various places in Friuli and Liguria . From 1926 he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Florence , from 1928 he learned at the Arcetri observatory , which was a center of solar research in Italy under Giorgio Abetti . In December 1930 he completed his studies with a thesis on spectroscopic observations of the sun with distinction.

After his military service he spent a year in Utrecht on a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1934 , where he worked with Marcel Minnaert on theoretical and experimental spectroscopy . He then worked as an assistant in Arcetri. He took part in the expedition organized by Abetti to Orenburg in the USSR to observe the total solar eclipse of June 19, 1936.

In early 1937 he was transferred to the Carloforte astronomical station in Sardinia and appointed director in 1938. From 1938 to 1941 he gave lectures on theoretical physics and astronomy at the University of Cagliari . In October 1939 he returned to Arcetri. He was called up several times during World War II . From 1942 to 1946 he was responsible for the spectroscopy lectures in Florence. With a grant from the British Council , he stayed ten months from October 1947 in Cambridge , where he studied the methods of emerging solar radio astronomy at the Cavendish Laboratory .

In 1953 he was appointed professor of astronomy at the University of Florence and succeeded Giorgio Abetti's director of the Arcetri observatory, which he remained until his death in 1978.

In March 1941 he married Beatrice Crinò, with whom he had two children, Alberto and Giovanna, who also became astronomers. After the death of his first wife, in April 1966 he married Maria Luisa Bonelli , director of the Institute and Museum for the History of Science in Florence.

Righini was active on numerous commissions of the IAU and was president or vice-president by some. He was president of the Società Astronomica Italiana and a member of numerous science academies.

Services

Righini dealt mainly with solar physics , spectroscopy and atmospheric physics . He observed numerous solar eclipses, starting in 1961 from aircraft at great heights, in order to determine the exact duration of the eclipse and to investigate phenomena at the edges of the shadow cone. From the observations of 1936 he determined the color and temperature index of the solar corona and was one of the first to show that part of the corona radiation is due to diffuse light from the interplanetary dust . Together with Armin Joseph Deutsch he discovered cold regions in the corona.

Since 1960 he has carried out radio observations of the sun, in 1963 he built a parabolic antenna with a diameter of 10 m for solar observations at a wavelength of around 3 cm. He campaigned for international cooperation and was an active supporter of the JOSO (Joint Organization for Solar Observations) project proposed by Karl-Otto Kiepenheuer in 1967 , which carried out the site testing for a large solar observatory that was finally implemented at the Observatorio del Teide .

From 1962 he also dealt with the history of astronomy, in particular with Galileo Galilei . His book Contributo alla interpretazione scientifica dell'opera astronomica di Galileo ("Contribution to the scientific interpretation of the astronomical work of Galileo") was published posthumously in 1978.

Honors

literature

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ according to other information (DBI): January 16
  2. ↑ according to other information (Rosino 1979): May 29
  3. ^ Lutz D. Schmadel: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . 6th edition. Springer, Heidelberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-29717-5 , p. 687 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-642-29718-2 .
personal data
SURNAME Righini, Guglielmo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Castelfranco Veneto
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1978
Place of death Florence